"We're not responsible", bleats Lowles as the focus shifts to Hope not Hate inspired violence and lies

Having spent the past year doing his very best to stoke up hysteria by misrepresenting UKIP's immigration policy, HnH director Nick Lowles has this afternoon published a self-justifying set of lies and evasions on his personal blog. This came after UKIP leader Nigel Farage shone a spotlight on the violence Hope not Hate and Unite Against Fascism  have incited against UKIP in an interviewon BBC1's 'Sunday Politics' programme this morning.


Farage said, "Sadly we have a a couple of organisations out there headed up by senior Labour Party figures, who purport to be against fascism and extremism, who receive funding from the Department of Communities, who receive funding from the trade unions, who have acted in a violent way more than once."

Asked if he was accusing the Labour Party of organising the violence, he said: "No. I said Unite against Fascism and Hope not Hate are taxpayer-funded, they are trade union-funded, they are headed up by very senior Labour figures".

Lowles bleats a whole host of untruths and partial truths in his defence as he sees his income stream unravel before his eyes. In his response, it is what he fails to say which is more revealing than what he does. As an example, nowhere in his blog posting does he deny that Hope not Hate members have acted in a violent way and he makes no attempt to disassociate Hope not Hate from such violence.

Hope not Hate of course have a long history of inciting violence against groups they don't like. We blogged back in February of this year how HnH 'director of intelligence', former BNP thug Matthew Collins sent a series of tweets during a visit to London by members of the Hungarian far-right party Jobbik which were designed to vector Unite Against Fascism boot boys to their exact location. This sort of incitement has been carried out repeatedly by Hope not Hate, including during EDL demonstrations both in the UK and overseas.

As for direct violence against UKIP Andrew Scott, the man convicted of assaulting Farage with a banner in Margate, was a Hope not Hate supporter. Fred Glenister, the man currently on bail after assaulting Farage by hitting him with an egg in Nottingham, was a Hope not Hate supporter.

Of the rest of his evasions, to take some of them in turn:

"We are not aligned to any political party" - This is hardly worth responding to. It is so transparently a Labour Party & trades union front that such an assertion is simply laughable. Lowles deputy director is Ruth Smeeth, a Labour parliamentary candidate selected for a safe seat, while 80%+ of their funding comes from the trades unions. UnionsTogether organiser Byron Taylor sits on HnH's management board. Meanwhile, in 2009, Lowles wrote, "anybody...serious about stopping the BNP was by now mobilised behind the Labour Party campaign. The campaign was carefully planned with Hope Not Hate Yorkshire to coordinate Labour activity and third party interventions". Former Labour MEP and Europe Minister Glenis Kinnock is a patron. Meanwhile, Hope not Hate's online campaigning is managed by the Labour facing Blue State Digital. Verdict - Lie

"(Our) supporters have not attacked or disrupted any UKIP meeting, nor have we encouraged anyone to hold protests outside such meetings." - Except that UnionsTogether is closely aligned with the UAF's "Stand up to UKIP" campaign, while their organiser Byron Taylor said earlier this year on the Labour List website, "To save them a lot of time and effort, I’m very happy to point out that in my spare time I’m on the management committee of HOPE Not Hate". Attendees at last week's UKIP rally in Westminster may have noticed that alongside the Socialist Workers Party (no imperialist apostrophe in their name) banners were a large number of 'UNITE' ones. And it was difficult to miss the UnionsTogether advertising truck with their poster on it which drove past repeatedly. As we reported the following day, our own representative at the protest reported that a number of SWP people present also identified themselves as Hope not Hate activists. The membership overlap between these organisations is so great that it is impossible to tell where one ends and where another begins. We have of course dealt with precisely this issue in more detail in an earlier posting and comprehensively demolished Lowles' lies then Verdict - Lie

Nigel Farage has claimed  that I'm a member of the Communist Party with close links to the Socialist Workers Party: claims which are utterly untrue - We can not comment on his membership status with the Communist Party, but it has long been rumoured that he was a member in the past. As for links with the Socialist Workers Party, HnH paid hack Carl Morphett is a former member, while the HnH website frequently highlights events run by Love Music, Hate Racism, another (like UAF) SWP front organisation, this one headed by UAF in-house rapist and former SWP leader Martin Smith. Meanwhile, UnionsTogether - who are actively represented on HnH's board and who supply funding to HnH - work closely with the UAF in the 'Stand up to UKIP' campaign (see above) Verdict - Lie

"Now Farage is peddling a fantasy that we have received Government money to take him on. This is a lie. Three years ago our charitable arm received a grant for £60,000 from the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) to undertake anti-racist community work in four areas of the country. This was a one-year project which ended in 2012, long before we started scrutinising UKIP" - Hope not Hate's accounts show a total of over £120k received from the DCLG between 2010 and 2012. As their most recent accounts have yet to be filed, it is not possible to tell whether this has continued. Meanwhile, Hope not Hate has been scrutinising UKIP since 2005, as confirmed by former UKIP staffer Mark Croucher who liaised with them. Verdict - Lie

"Last year we began to identify racists and extremists within UKIP. We initially tried to form a constructive relationship with the party leadership but it became quickly evident that they had no interest in working together to root out these racists" - UKIP worked closely with Searchlight and then Hope not Hate (see above) up until the scale of the drift in support from Labour to UKIP became clear. By 2011, this cooperation had completely ceased, not because of UKIP, but because of Hope not Hate, who had no interest in continuing cooperation with a party it was about to start actively campaigning against. Verdict - Lie

So why did Lowles fail to disclaim violence? A look at their supporter's comments on their Facebook page is instructive. In an article published on the 25th January this year regarding comments by UKIP's Farage on gun control, a whole series of HnH supporters made violent suggestions, including the following:

 

These are the sort of comments which - had they featured on a UKIP website or been written by a UKIP supporter - would be spread all across Hope not Hate's page as 'evidence' or 'proof' of violent intentions.